
Glass E.A1Z 

Book___ ^ 



.1^5 



VICTORY TURNED INTO MOURNING. 



A DISCOURSE, 



OS OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF 






ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 



PREACHED -A.T CYSTINE, 



ALFRED E. IVES. 



PUBLISHED BY BEQUEST. 



BANGOR : 
-WHEEIjER & LYI^DE, PRINTERS, 



isqo. 



VICTOEY TUKNED INTO MOUKNING. 



A DISCOURSE, 



ON OCCASION OF THE DfeATH OF 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



LATE PKESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 



FREACHED AT C A. S T I OST E , 



ALFRED E. IVES. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST, 



BANGOR: 
"WHEELER, & LYNDE, RRHSTTERS. 



VICTOEY TURNED INTO MOURNING. 



2 Samuel, xix. 2 : — " The victory that day was turned into mourn- 
ing unto all the people." 

A most unnatural rebellion against king David had just been sup- 
pressed by one sharp, decisive battle, and by the ignominious death 
of the rebel leader. David was an aflfectionate father as well as a 
sovereign ; and though he had been compelled to take hasty flight 
from his capital, to save his life, finding no place of safety short of 
the eastern bank of the Jordan, — the whole kingdom, aside from this, 
being swept over by the sudden wave of the rebellion, — yet now, 
when the crisis was past, and the victory had given him security for 
his life and his throne, his thoughts became absorbed in the tragic 
fate of his son, — that indulged and favored but ambitious son, who 
had so wickedly plotted against the throne and the very life of his 
father, and had just been slain in the midst of his wickedness. For- 
getting all other interests, the feelings of the father overcame the 
man a.nd the sovereign, and he gave himself up to the agony of the 
moment. 

The army, which had remained faithful to the king, and had suf- 
fered, and fought, and bled, and conquered, leaving not a few of their 
number dead upon the field, flushed with the great victory, returned, 
expecting the thanks and congratulations of a grateful sovereign, so nar- 
rowly escaped from utter destruction. There was a strong and pain- 
ful revulsion of feeling as they found king David mourning for 
Absalom ; no thought for them, their labors and sufierings ; no 



thought for the welfare of the nation ; given up to tenderness and 
grief at the just fate of the rebel, who deserved thousand a deaths. 
There was a time for pity, a time for compassion, a time to 
weep and lament ; but such feelings and expressions at this 
time, in these circumstances, such a reception, were too much for the 
people ; and the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all 
the people ; and they got them away by stealth into the city, as 
people ashamed steal away from the battle. 

This was David's weakness, though there was much to excuse that 
weakness. Then, higher interests than the promptings of his own 
compassion, — the interests of a great kingdom, — the interests of all 
good government everywhere, should have been controlling. Let him 
weep, if he must, — this is not forbidden; — but let him hold aloft, all 
the while, a keen and glittering sword. 

And Joab came into the house unto the king and said, Thou hast 
shamed this day the faces of all thy servants, which this day have 
saved thy life, and the lives of thy sons and of thy daughters, and the 
lives of thy wives, and the lives of thy concubines; in that thou 
lovest thine enemies and hatest thy friends. For thou hast declared 
this day that thou regardest neither princes nor servants ; for this 
day I perceive that if Absalom had lived and all we had died this 
day, then it had pleased thee well. 

It was a bold but deserved reproof; for while clemency toward 
the mass of misguided men, who had been lured away, was proper, 
yet sorrow and regret for the death of the arch rebel was unkindness 
and unfaithfulness to his devoted servants,^ — was dishonorable to the 
true and heroic men just slain in his behalf on the battle-field. 

Our circumstances have points of strong resemblance to these, and 
points of striking difference. In each case, it is rebellion against 
righteous government. Then, it was simple ambition ; now, it is 
that and much more : back of that ambition, the platform on which 
that rebellion rested, was a system of crying wickedness, seeking per- 
petuation, and extension, and domination, through rebellion. There, 
rebellion was sudden, sweeping like a flash — like fire through the 
prairie grass with a strong wind, from Dan to Beersheba. Here, it 
is the result of long and deep plotting, though sudden in its outbreak 
and confined to its legitimate territory. There, the guilty head of 
the rebellion was slain. Here, many less culpable, and many inno- 



cent, but pressed into the rebel ranks, have fallen ; but the arch- 
traitors, the villainous conspirators, the diabolical authors of the re- 
bellion, are not hanging, like Absalom, between the earth and the 
heaven ; they still live, -without even the signs of penitence. There, 
rebellion met a disastrous overthrow, its army at once routed and 
scattered. Not so quickly, by a single battle, but more thoroughly, 
has the rebellion here also been crushed, its resources utterly ex- 
hausted. 

But the point of striking contrast is in that which turns our vic- 
tory into weeping. At the last, after a long and desperate struggle, 
the final blow had beaten down and scattered the most formidable 
armies of the rebellion. The rebel capital, and the commander-in- 
chief of all the rebel armies, were in our hands. The members of the 
rebel government were fugitives. We were rejoicing in the victory. 
Every heart was full and overflowing. Salutes, illuminations, bon- 
fires, and waving flags, were everywhere. The oppressive weight 
which had borne on the hearts of all the loyal people for four weary 
years of wasting and blood, was lifted. There was relief. There was 
success. There was glorious victory. 

In the midst of this rejoicing, the sad tidings were borne to us 
yesterday, and over all the land, that the President of the United 
States was no more ; that he had fallen by the hand of an assassin. 
In the midst of his usefulness, in his high position, the pivot on which 
the great interests of the nation were turning, the man on whom 
more than any other at this time, the eyes of the world were looking — 
he was murderously shot. 

In the town of Delft, in the Netherlands, on Tuesday, July 10, 
1584, at two o'clock in the afternoon, the celebrated William, Prince 
of Orange, rose from his table after dinner, and passing into the 
vestibule, was just beginning to mount the staircase to his private 
apartment, when a man emerged from a recess, and standing with- 
in a foot or two of the Prince, discharged a pistol full at his heart. 
Three poisoned balls entered his body. The Prince exclaimed, 
"0 my God, have mercy on my soul ; my God, have mercy on this 
poor people," and in a few minutes breathed his last in the arms of 
his wife and sister.* 

To this Prince, often called William the Silent, the Dutch Repub- 



*Motley, Dutch Republic. 



lie, as an emancipated commonwealth, owned ita existence. His 
courage and skill, in military and political combinations, overcame 
the most powerful and unscrupulous monarch of his age, the base 
and depraved Philip the Second, of Spain. That long and desper- 
ate struggle forms one of the most important epochs in history, a 
history not foreign to us, since "the revolutions in Holland, England 
and America are all links of one chain," "a single chapter in the 
great volume of human fate," progressive steps in the advancement 
of freedom. 

William was a man of peculiar integrity and uprightness, a reli- 
gious man, in the darkest hours relying implicity on the wisdom and 
goodness of God ; serene in danger, unshaken in constancy ; a sol- 
dier, a statesman ; not only the head of the State, but enthroned in 
the affections of his people. 

What Phillip could not effect by arms nor by diplomacy, he at- 
tempted by villainy, setting a price on the head of the foremost 
man of the age ;. offering 25,000 crowns and large additional ad- 
vantages, to any assassin who would take the life of the Prince of 
Orange. 

Successive attempts were made at his life ; the plottings were 
many, but without effect, till he fell by the vile hand of Gerard. 

Great as was the loss of the country, great as was the work re- 
maining for him to do, in consolidating the States into one great and 
free Commonwealth, yet his life and labors established the Dutch 
Kepublic. 

We have to look far and wide in human history to find a parallel 
where so much personal worth, and a life so useful and so necessary 
to his country, in one filling the highest office in the State, is so 
basely taken by the hand of villainy, at the instigation of his en- 
emies. 

In this country, during the last four years, we have seen events 
transpire, among the most remarkable in the history of the world ; 
taking into account the age, the country, the aim, the manner, the 
magnitude of the events, more striking probably than any thing in 
the past, in the form of rebellion, revolution and war. The depths 
of human wickedness had been sounded, and we supposed the bot- 
■ tom had been touched, already, in the progress of this rebellion, but 
a lower deep has been found. 



The President of the United States, called to that high office by the 
suflFrages of a free people, is shot down and murdered by a vile as- 
sasassin. And this is done, not when his death can have any mate- 
rial effect on the success or failure of the rebellion. Months ago 
possibly it might have been otherwise. Now the rebellion is crushed 
and cannot be resuscitated. It is dead except, it may be, the spasm 
of a final gasp. 

And it is not the President alone, but the same murderous aim 
seeks the life of the distinguished Secretary of State, whose skilful 
and wise diplomacy has carried us clear from the interferance of for- 
eign nations ; and who is among the few of our public men who de- 
serve the name of Statesmen. As if no element of meanness were to 
be wanting in the base assassination, he is assailed by the dagger 
when reclining, a weakened invalid, upon his couch — the murderous 
hand inflicting fearful wounds upon all in attendance. 

Is there a lower deep than this in the depravity of man ? Has this 
vile rebellion still another odious feature ? Can it show itself more 
devilish ? Perhaps this last drama was necsssary to break the last 
link that could bind any decent mind in sympathy with the rebel- 
lion; and to fill fall the cup of humiliation of those governments and 
peoples of the old world, whose hearts and hands have been with 
these wicked men. 

Abraham Lincoln will live in the hearts of the men of this gen- 
eration while they live ! Abraham Lincoln is a name that will 
grow brighter as the years roll on ! If he had defects, they will be 
all forgotten, and only his virtues, his more than Roman virtues, 
will live, esteemed more highly as, in the distance, they are seen 
more truly. Among four millions of our population, and that num- 
ber ere long to be ten and twenty millions, he will be canonized ; more 
and more, as the years pass, he will rise before them, in gigantic 
proportions, as a very demigod, or as God's chosen Angel of Deliv- 
erance ! 

He had stood at the helm, and, through the terrible storm, cau- 
tiously, calmly, successfully, had guided the ship of state. All inex- 
perienced before, in the new and terrible trials to which we were 
called, he had proved the man for the occasion. His strong and 
plain practical sense, and his instinctive sagacity ; his deliberate but 
safe judgment, and his teachable watching for the providence of 



God ; his unshaken confidence in the right, committing to that right 
■ himself and his precious charge ; his incorruptible i ntegrity ; his 
rare simplicity ; his high morality ; his humble fear of God ; 
these combined to form a character and a man, homely indeed, but 
strong and true ; never pretentious, never sparkling, but practical, 
wise, reliable — as if a sort of infallible instinct had guided him 
where reason could not feel assured, where statesmanship was at a 
loss — a strange man in these artificial days — raised up by God and 
especially schooled for this emergency. God's appointed leader, he 
conducted us, like Moses, through the wilderness to the borders of 
the promised land; as Moses, from Nebo looked over that promised 
inheritance, so he, from Richmond, saw the certainty and the near- 
ness of the blessed consummation ; and when we were looking that 
he should himself lead us over Jordan, and himself see us settled 
safely and securely in that new and better order which he had inau- 
gurated, suddenly we are shocked with the astounding intelligence 
that he is taken from us. Had there been some premonition, some 
sickness, something that should have said to us ; "Knowest thou that 
the Lord will take away thy Master from thy head to-day ?" — while 
the bereavement would have been equal, the shock would have been 
less. Had it been immediately by the hand of God, and not by the 
hand of villany, the trial to our feelings would have been less. Had 
he been a difierent man,^not less sagacious, and wise, and success- 
ful, but with less of the milk of human kindness ; with a heart less 
warm and less large ; with less of those qualities which made so 
proper the familiar and hardly respectful appellation, "Father Abra- 
ham ;" had his administration, in what was personal to himself, been 
less paternal and more austere ; had he been less familiar and more 
reserved and distant — standing more on his dignity, and less child- 
like—more ready to say "No," and less kindly indulgent,— then we 
could bear our affliction better. But now it makes its appeal to the 
heart, so that, among all the people, the shout and the joy of victory 
are immediately turned to mourning. There was something in the 
simplicity of his manners, though awkward,— in the simplicity of his 
words and style, that knew nothing of the schools,— in the simplicity 
of his heart, too large and too honest to cherish secretion or indulge 
in selfishness, that appealed to the confidence and the affection of 
others. 

la the time of our bereavement, when our hearts are tender and 



sad, we are prone to overlook and forget the imperfections of the 
departed whom we love, remembering while we magnify only their . 
worthiness. Doubtless we are liable to do so now. But striving to 
lay aside all partiality, I think it cannot be o'herwisc than that im- 
partial history will reokon him as a man especially raised up and es- 
pecially qualified for a work greater and more important than often 
falls to the lot of great men : and that the verdict will be, that he 
performed that duty with rare fidelity and rare ability : that when 
the life of the nation was imperilled, and when in that national life 
were bound up the hopes and the prospects of free governments 
throughout the world — the cause of the people as opposed to the 
governments of oppression ; when human slavery was to be the cor- 
ner stone of a new government, and was to be perpetuated and ex- 
tended over unlimited territory, — or that system of oppression and 
the projects of that new government, reared on the ruins of the 
Great Kepublic,were to be suppressed and crushed, and fcur millions 
of bondmen were to be led forth to freedom, — that he, as God's 
instrument, set them free, and thwaried the unholy plot, stamping 
rebellion under foot, and preserved the best government the world 
has ever known. The nation lives ! This free government sur- 
vives the terrible ordeal ! The rebellion has been broken and stamped 
as the small dust ! The combination of treachery acd treason, cf 
rebellion and murder, struggling with desperation in the death grap- 
ple, has been overcome ! The system of slavery, hanging like a 
vampire on the nation's life, holding in bondage four millions of 
human beings, has been annihilated ! True Democracy, — true and 
not spurious and disloyal — and New England principles, prevail over^ 
a hateful and corrupt oligarchy ! These are the mighty results of 
the four years' struggle — these years of suffering and blood ; and these 
results will be more justly appreciated in the future. And the 
guiding hand during these eventful years has finished its work. The 
head and the heart on which we have so much depended, and to 
which wc are so much indebted, are ours no more. Abraham Lin- 
coln is dead ! 

Perhaps it was fitting that it should be so. God, who has hereto- 
fore frustrated the plottings against the life of the President, may 
have now ceased to interpose his restraints, because thereby he could 
subserve his ends, and make the wrath of man to praise him. 

If the personal fame of the President had been the object, he had 
now risen to the full height of hh glory. His sua stood at mid 

2 
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10 



heaven. We cannot suppose it possible that in the complications 
necessarily involved in the many difficult questions yet to be settled, 
as the consequence of this rebellion, that any human wisdom will 
fail sometimes to mistake. Had he been spared, his reputation 
would have been more likely, in some measure, to decline than to in- 
crease. Now his glory is untarnished. And throughout the land, 
among all classes, and in coming years, and over all the world, and 
ever in history, his sudden and tragic death, and the blackness of 
that malignity which countenanced, and sympathized with, and encour- 
aged, and plotted, and executed the hellish deed, will make more strik- 
ing and more bright, the name and the fame of the illustrious dead. 

But we cannot doubt, that in permitting this evil, there were ends 
of wisdom and goodness in the great plan of Him whose purposes em- 
brace and use, as means or as occasions, both the benevolence and 
the malignity of man. We may believe that among the designs of 
God, in permitting this awful tragedy, was the purpose to teach us 
that our dependence for wisdom must not be on man. Hitherto it has 
been strikingly manifest that God has directed our affiiirs through the 
war. Mr. Lincoln acknowledged that he had not controlled circum- 
stances, but that circumstances had controlled him. But circum- 
stances are the finger and handwriting of God. —In the process of 
settlement and reconstruction now before us, caution and wisdom are 
needful, fully equal to the necessity of that period when the founda- 
tions of the government were laid. Not improbably we had been 
too confident that the sagacity and wisdom, so manifest in conduct- 
ing our affairs during the pa&t four years, would be equal to the 
coming emorsencies. We are now cut off from that confidence. 
Our thoughts and ou r hopes naturally turn upward. It is a strength 
and w'sdom not human but divine that we need. 

We were in the midst of our exultation. The military power of 
the South — a power whose mad onset few governments could have 
resisted, and whose energetic and desperate persistance few, probably 
none other, could have endured — had been shivered and broken in 
pieces. The rebellion, whose frightful Gorgon head had been a thing 
of terror for four eventful years, was crushed. The rebel capital, 
so confident in its position and its military defenses, was in our 
hands. Our government, which had never before been severely 
tested, had shown its ability to live in the wildest sea, and to weather 
the most terrible of storms, cominw out with her timbers staunch. 



11 



We liad shown to the world, what had never before been known, the 
strength and capabilities of a free government. We were congratu- 
lating ourselves that the war, of such gigantic magnitude, had found 
our resources ample ; that we were emerging, by no means exhaust- 
ed, — the population not diminished but actually increased during 
these four years, — our property and resources apparently not less 
than before ; even the debt, while standing against us as a govern- 
ment, yet in large part not against us as a people, since the notes of 
the government are due at home rather than abroad. We also felt 
the relief and the satisfaction of knowing that now every man's 
bands were loosed. — the cry of the enslaved no more rising against 
us to heaven — that the justice of God was no longer arrayed 
against us for the continuance of oppression. — ^The heavy weight 
removed, the causes of rejoicing so many and so great, the elastic 
heart of the people, long held down, sprung forth, jubilant, exultant! 
And while personal sorrow was in many hearts, and personal be- 
reavement weighed down many a household, yet many shouted aloud 
for joy, so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of 
joy from the noise ot the weeping of the people; for the people 
shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off. 

In these circumstances, while justified in suitable expressions of 
joy, perhaps we were not enough mindful of the many and serious 
difficulties still before us, — different in their nature indeed, but seri- 
ous in magnitude. The Union, so far broken up by this rebellion, 
is to be reconstructed : are our wisest and most sagacious statesmen 
confident and agreed as to the best method and the right method ? 
There are conflicting elements in the constitution of Southern soci- 
ety, now thrown out of their former places, or in the process of be- 
ing so ; the aristocracy, the poor whites and the blacks, are not now, 
relatively, where they were before ; their relative status in the future 
cannot be the same as in past time : but changes in things so radical 
are very serious. Then the blacks themselves — four millions, before 
slaves, now free — no thoughtful man can fail to see and feel that a 
problem is before us, in this population, not easy to be solved. And 
what shall be done with the rebels themselves? Excessive clemency 
and weakness may be ready to answer. Excessive severity may be 
equally prompt in her decisions, and equally prompt to execute them, 
if hemp enough can be found in the land. And when this is all over, 
there still remains^ as a cause of solicitude, the feeling in the South 



12 



which this war has engendered, and which will not immediately and 
wholly die. Although the two cases in many important respects are 
unlike, we may remember that the rebellion of Absalom and the di- 
vision of the kingdom under Kehoboam are not very remote from 
each other. 

Perhaps our rejoicings were not enough with our afflictions in 
view. What a loss of human life ! If we take no account of those 
who have fallen fighting foi a wicked cause — once a part of our 
strength and no less a loss because dying as rebels — how many of 
our young men have died that the nation might be free ! How 
many, of the noblest and the best — how many, who were the joy and 
the pride and the hope of their generation — dying on the field of battle, 
killed outright, or after hours or days of sufiering, on the field or in 
the hospital ; dying from hardships or privation or disease ; dying 
from starvation, or murdered in Southern prisons, with barbarities 
and horr^s which nothing but slavery has ever engendered ! How 
many still live, disabled, enfeebled, maimed I How many households, 
how many hearts, carry a load of sorrow which will continue while 
they live — parents, widows, orphans ! 

Above the great sepulchre of this rebellion, where sleep the honored 
dead, sacrificed for their country's salvation, the name of Abraham 
Lincoln, and the name of the humblest soldier who has fallen, are 
engraved on the same immortal tablet ! i 

Perhaps our rejoicings were not enough with trembling. We 
seemed warranted in the feeling of assurance that the adverse gale 
which has blown so violently and long, had expended its strength, 
and that coming prosperity was nigh and sure. But how a single 
bullet can change the prospects and condition of a great nation ! — 
How in a moment, may a thing, slight in itself, prove disastrous to 
dearest interests ! 

Perhaps we were beginning to feel less our dependence on God. — 
We had been made at times, during the fearful strife, to feel and 
acknowledge that our help was in an Almighty arm. If now the 
feeling was waking within us that our arm had gpttea us the victory, 
we have been taught that an arm of flesh is weak, and may fail us in 
an hour. 

It is a great truth, to be ever in mind, that in his various dealings 
with us, in the blessings he confers, and in the evils which he per- 



13 



mits, it is not our material prosperity at which God aims — not so 
much to make us wealthy and populous and powerful — or it is these 
only as they may advance a farther end, or only as they are the le- 
gitimate consequences of that which is more valuable. * He would 
make us a better people. He would correct what is wrong and make 
us right. He would impart to us better principles. fie would ele- 
vate and ennoble our aims. He would deepen and quicken within us 
the tone of a better life. The discipline of our aiSictions is valua- 
ble in. his sight so far, and only so far, as it is healthy, moral disci- 
pline — only so far as it makes us better. As we have looked at this 
great conflict, and as God has looked at it — as we have planned and 
labored and battled, and as God has acted for us, or has withholden 
his hand — we each have not always had the same specific end in 
view, and therefore the particular results, from time to time, have 
not always been what we desired. What we were to become as in- 
dividuals, and as a nation, morally — as doing right and committed to 
the right — as honoring God and walking in his fear — the influence 
we were preparing to exert upon the world, and the nature even 
more than the amount of that influence — our preparation to act in 
carrying out God's purposes in raising and saving a fallen and ruined 
world — this is the end of God ; for this he is schooling us ; for this 
he is seeking to prepare us. He would free us from crying injus- 
tice, and from corruption, and from the evils of effeminacy, and make 
us manly, and pure, and upright, and strong, in preparation for that 
restored and glorious kingdom of which Jesus Christ is the Head ! 
Are we forbidden in earthly interests to find analogies to things 
spiritual and heavenly ? In reclaiming the world from its rebellion, 
and gaining back and restoring the kingdom of God, how everything 
is cemented and sealed with blood ! Even the world's Redeemer is 
made a bloody sacrifice. And our earthly interests, in this, are after 
the pattern of the heavenly, in that our great National Edifice, in 
' its purification and reconstruction, is cemented with blood ; while our 
noblest Victim has met a bloody death. 

But will the great issue with rebellion be affected by this assassi- 
nation ? Not at all. It will be only that more iron will enter mto 
the nerve of every soldier, and new keenness into the edge of his 
sword. It will be, to the leaders of the rebellion, that Justice will 
yield less readily to the intercession of Mercy. It will be that a 
lower humiliation will be awarded to the pride of the South. 



14 



Wiiat will be its effect on the government? Ours is a government 
of the people ; are they less able to govern themselves ? The Ad- 
ministration only carries out the people's will. Possibly there may 
be some modification of policy on some certain points, as the result; 
perhaps some slight embarrassment. It is not one mind but many 
minds that are to shape the policy of the future. He who received 
the prompting of those minds, and acted out their convictions, is 
gone, but they remain. 

In Grod's spiritual kingdom the blood of martyrs has been the 
seed of the church. The cause of righteous and legitimate govern- 
ment, the cause of human freedom, have a martyr — a most distin- 
guished martyr ! That blood will hallow and strengthen the gov- 
ernment. That blood will hallow the cause of Freedom ; and in 
all ages and in all lands will make human bondage execrable. Slav- 
ery and rebellion, slavery and murder — they are different features 
of the same face-^different parts of the same thing. 






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